What if Caleb Bowers (“Our culture is sexually broken,” March 5, 2015) were to describe, in consideration of what he calls “agápē love,” how a wife should treat her husband? It would look like this: “Sex becomes a gift to [her] spouse because [she] express[es] [her] sexuality to ultimately fulfill [his] sexual needs. [She has] removed [her] needs and act[s] on [his] alone.” Such a woman would be unconcerned with her physical and emotional needs, and devote herself utterly to her husband’s sexual pleasure. She would be the “Fifty Shades of Grey” protagonist, except married and even more submissive. But Bowers points to that franchise’s popularity — in particular, the movie’s release for Valentine’s Day — as a sign that “our culture has a disordered conception of the relationship between love and sexuality.” What gives?
Bowers’ piece is reminiscent of Edward Sri’s lecture on “Biblical principles for relationships” last spring. Sri called love “total sacrifice.” Such popular presentations of the Theology of the Body on campus boil down to this: In marriage, seek not your own good, but only someone else’s. Why? Bowers sets up a dichotomy whereby the alternative is complete selfishness. But one can be justly concerned with his own good as well as someone else’s. Indeed, there is in marriage a common good in procreation, the mutual support of spouses, and, yes, even in shared sexual pleasure.
If a man truly wanted to deny his needs and devote himself wholly to another’s, then he should marry the ugliest and most difficult woman he can find. He would thereby deny his selfish desire for a beautiful, supportive mate, and serve for life someone who would otherwise be alone. He would also demonstrate that he is precisely the opposite of the sort of man who actually appeals to women. He would be the sort who women say “would make a good husband”… for someone else. The difficulty for the “Nice Guy” is that his “total sacrifice” often comes across as desperate and servile, and suggests a lack of confidence and assertiveness, traits that help to signal that he can be a capable protector and provider.
To encourage people not to seek sexual pleasure in marriage is particularly naïve, especially when compared to the hardheadedness of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 where he acknowledges that most people want sexual pleasure, and thus he encourages them to have it in marriage. As a great writer once remarked, “There is no necessary opposition between sensuality and chastity; every good marriage, every love affair, that comes from the heart is beyond this opposition.”
